


want you, nothing else

by halfthemoon



Category: TOMORROW X TOGETHER | TXT (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Mentions of blood and injuries, Non-Linear Narrative, taylor swift made another cameo here i'm sorry she had me in a chokehold, yeonbin are exes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:35:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27819868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfthemoon/pseuds/halfthemoon
Summary: “Fuck,” the stranger curses out of his blood-stained lips, peering down at him with a knife in his hand. Slowly, he puts the edge of it under his jaw, tipping his head up. “Fuck, it’s you.”Soobin, for the love of god, can’t say anything coherent. The night is ugly as hell, and yet under it, Choi Yeonjun is still the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.“Hey,” he croaks, his throat closing up.
Relationships: Choi Soobin/Choi Yeonjun
Comments: 29
Kudos: 229





	want you, nothing else

**Author's Note:**

> warnings: i mention a lot of blood and injuries. please check the tags.
> 
> please take this with a grain of salt hehe. i've always wanted to write this, i'm glad i finally did it! thank you kristy for reading this and urged me to go on i love you <3

Soobin’s been running forever.

He opens the door to the dusty, old theatre. The sound echoes hard in his eardrums, making him hyper aware of the sudden stripped sound from the outside world. It closes with a click, then it’s pitch black. The night’s light comes through the tinted windows, barely-there strips of the moon illuminating the room.

There’s a bare second when he takes the chance to breathe in because everything’s burning, everything’s sore, and he doesn’t know how else to keep it up -

The zombie knocks into him. Its ugly and musty smell might as well be poison.

When his body meets the floor, Soobin sees stars.

There’s a shooting pain up his ankle, then between his rib cage, blood stinging all over his bones. He barely has the time to take his knife before the zombie clambers on top of him with a heavy weight and a noisy, rumbling echo from its throat.

He holds on to its shoulder with his remaining strength, shielding his skin from its open mouth, its bared hideous teeth. It looks at him with that sunken, lifeless eyes that make him sick.

Soobin’s been running forever. He doesn’t think he wants to anymore.

Doesn’t think he’s able to anymore. He’s so goddamn tired.

“Get the fuck off,” he hisses, pulling at its blood-coated hair, the liquid smearing his palm. Zombies aren’t as strong as they are fast, but they’re fucking relentless and impatient, and right now Soobin is just _tired,_ hasn’t eaten anything in days, and he just wants to close his eyes and _sleep_ -

If he let this zombie go, he’d sleep. He’d _rest_ , finally.

His legs are sore. His eyes are pricking, white-hot. His hands aren’t steady, they shake and tremble.

He just wants to _sleep -_

Soobin stares at its green, almost cracked skin, the botched scar on its cheek, the open wound on its forehead - and _thinks_ : what a sight to see before he fucking dies.

His grip loosens, his knuckles slowly weakening at its shoulders. He feels the dripping blood of its scar drop on his chest, down to his shirt. He stares, eyes wide, desperation clinging into his chest until it slowly dissipates and

he lets go.

“Watch out!”

Before the zombie could sink its teeth to his skin, a knife flies to its head and punctures it dead.

Soobin’s mind goes blank. The zombie’s limp body drops weakly to his chest, hanging head on his shoulder, but he can’t move, everything around him suddenly standing still.

The voice chimes inside of his ribs, enfolding him with a dread so different than what he’s used to. It brings a sense of safety for a second before he registers who it belongs to.

The stranger steps close to him, the voice going nearer. “Hey, you okay?” he repeats.

Soobin’s not mistaken. He will never be mistaken.

When he still doesn’t answer, the fear creeps up his nape. The stranger kneels beside him, and Soobin closes his eyes.

“Did you hear me - ”

The stranger’s words are halted when he shoves the zombie aside, and their eyes finally meet. Soobin only sees half of his face - the rest is shadowed. Still, it’s a face he knows.

Still, it hurts when he notices the pair of eyes, the hair, the same hard jaw.

“Fuck,” the stranger curses out of his blood-stained lips, peering down at him with a knife in his hand. Slowly, he puts the edge of it under his jaw, tipping his head up. “ _Fuck_ , it’s you.”

Soobin, for the love of god, can’t say anything coherent. The night is ugly as hell, and yet under it, Choi Yeonjun is still the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“Hey,” he croaks, his throat closing up.

\---

[This is how they meet for the first time:

Under the club lights. In the middle of noise.

Beomgyu is dancing beside him, all limbs, no finesse whatsoever. He holds on to his elbow and urges him to move. “Hyung, it’s a club,” he says, a little like yelling. He fits right here, between other things that move the same way - with that happy, cheery habit. “Dance or something, you loser.”

Soobin squints at him as a glow surrounds Beomgyu’s face, “You forced me out, this is a hostage situation,” he hisses, but Beomgyu only laughs and shakes his head uncaringly. He looks like he’s having fun, an almost infectious energy that Soobin is immune to. “You should’ve left me at home - ”

“It’s a Saturday,” he cuts him off, eyes mocking. “Am I going to let my best friend rot in his room? Of course not.”

Soobin huffs when a stranger knocks onto his back. He never liked this, not really his scene. He prefers being alone, a quietness that feels familiar. This is not, this is something he would rather avoid. The noise, the life, the thumps. This isn’t him.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what you were supposed to do - ”

Beomgyu ignores him completely. He hooks an arm around his shoulder and drags him through the dance floor, surging through the moving crowd, “Let’s find an unlucky stranger to dance with you.”

He taps on a boy’s shoulder randomly, and chirps, “Hey, would you dance with my friend? He’s very lonely - ”

The stranger ducks his head shyly, then reveals the boy behind him. Soobin notices their held hands immediately, an intimate twining, fingers locking. He knows what it means. The boyfriend isn’t really paying attention, blond hair knocking down his forehead as it flops rhythmically with the music.

“Sorry, I’m with my boyfriend,” he says in a bashful manner. He’s tall. He smiles so charmingly, like a spell. “You can dance with my friend, though? He’s, uh, well he’s a menace, but he’d dance with anyone - ”

Someone else appears then. Someone else, someone -

“Hey!” the friend greets them immediately, with a smile like the above lights, with a voice that doesn’t bounce, “Did Kai just say I’m a menace?” then he gets distracted by the change of the music, and he smiles again, closing his eyes, a hypnotizing, mesmerizing siren. “So who wants to dance?”

Beomgyu shoves him forward, “My friend! Please dance with him, he’s a poor, poor soul, has never danced with anyone before - ”

“Of course I have,” Soobin mumbles under his breath, but the stranger simply tilts his head. His eyes turn round. Multicolors, so many colors, so many vivid noisy colors on him.

“He doesn’t like to dance,” Beomgyu goes on, and the stranger mock gasps.

“We can’t let that happen,” he says, playing along.

Beomgyu looks satisfied with this, and smiles an innocent one. “We definitely can’t,” then he leaves. He leaves through the crowd, disappears into thin air. _The brat._

The stranger leans to his space. A shiver climbs up Soobin’s spine. He’s prettier up close, all pink, all unattainable skin.

His voice sounds different up close too. It’s more rich, sounds like the fizzy stringing lights. He opens his mouth, all unattainable mouth, “Would you dance with me then?”

Soobin flushes, but doesn’t back away. He meets his gaze, even when it’s a start of something scary. He meets his gaze, even when his tongue dries.

“Can I at least l know your name first?” he manages it out shakily.

The stranger grins, then breathes, “Yeonjun,” so low, so heightened. “My name is Yeonjun.”

“I’m Soobin.”

“Okay, Soobin,” he starts over, and smiles that loud sound. He leans a little closer. “Are you going to dance with me?”

Soobin nods numbly, heating up when Yeonjun holds on to his elbows and his hands travel up to his arms, to his shoulders, to the edge of his collarbones.

“It’s true,” he admits quietly, can’t focus on anything else now that Yeonjun’s so close like a limb, “I haven’t really danced with anyone.”

Yeonjun laughs to the compact air. Almost tangible, almost reclusive. He’s the only dot here. He’s the only throat, the only source of music. “That’s fine,” he says softly. “I can be your first.”

Soobin thinks, _what luck._ What luck, what luck.]

\---

Yeonjun sighs, so close to his mouth, their breaths almost tangling in the suffocating air.

“What are you doing here,” he whispers with a hint of urgency, something like anger in it. “Why - _what - ”_

Soobin stares at him quietly, heart in his throat. He hasn’t seen him in six months now, he thinks, if he counted properly. They’re in June right now, they broke up in January. Yeah. Six months.

“You saved my life,” Soobin heaves, his back still aching from the force. There’s dread under his skin, but it’s not because of the dead zombie, or the fact that he’s still lying, completely defenseless, on the floor in an old theater. It’s not from the knife still pressed sharply under his chin, barely grazing his skin either.

The dread comes from the boy.

The boy who still looks at him with fire and spite in his eyes.

“I didn’t know it was you I was saving,” Yeonjun says, so quiet. He doesn’t move, though. He doesn’t move, his knee on the side of Soobin’s rib cage.

“Still saved my life,” he says.

Yeonjun visibly gulps, his adam’s apple bobbing. “Didn’t count.”

“Okay,” he says, immediately relenting. He can’t believe he isn’t dreaming. “What are you doing here?”

“What do you think,” Yeonjun replies heatedly as he gets up, dusting his pants. Soobin stares at him from this position, heartbeat quickening at seeing a familiar face. There’s something so mesmerizing about seeing something as mundane as Yeonjun wiping sweat off his forehead, the moon’s hitting Yeonjun’s hair in an unpleasant way. His hair is dark as it’s ever been, flat and rough, knotted and tangled.

He can’t remember when was the last time he’s seen a human like this, so close up, so living.

“You’re hiding,” Soobin answers it for him, even when he reckons it was rhetorical more than anything. He gets up a little, propping his body with his elbow. He smells like dirt and blood.

Yeonjun bites his bottom lip. He usually does this when he’s nervous or when he doesn’t know what to say. Along with spreading out his fingers until they’re wide, stretched, then he puts them back together in a fist.

He’s doing both right now.

“I’ve been hiding here,” he says, stilted. “I’ve been hiding here, _alone_.”

Soobin squints at him. “Where are your friends?”

Yeonjun chuckles, but it’s dry. He treats it like a joke he only knows how to laugh at. Then a simple, casual shrug, except it’s halted and almost stuck. “Why do you care,” he mutters. “Where’s Beomgyu?”

He digs his nails to his knees. Hard, pained, stinging enough. “Why do _you_ care?”

Yeonjun looks at him. “I don’t,” he says quietly.

Soobin gets up, getting into eye-level with Yeonjun. Like this, he can really see him. His eyes are determined, rough, more terrifying than they’ve ever been. There’s soot on his left cheek. His hair sticks to his skin uncomfortably, and there’s blood about everywhere on his body.

He wants to ask him a lot of things.

Most of which aren’t related to the apocalypse. Most of which aren’t about the blood on his hands.

“Yeonjun,” Soobin says. He doesn’t know what’s the rest of it.

Yeonjun doesn’t either. He only stares at him, sadness in his eyes he knows too well.

\---

[On their fifth date, Soobin thinks he could be infatuated with Yeonjun forever.

“Listen,” Yeonjun says intently, teeth worried on his bottom lip. He holds the grip of the claw machine with something sturdy, gaze unbreakable. He looks so determined, like there’s some danger at the end of the line.

It’s just a claw machine.

“Soobin,” he repeats, breath halting as the claw starts dropping. “I _will_ get you a plushie, okay. It’s not just Taehyun who can get his boyfriend a plushie.”

“I don’t even own a plushie, hyung,” Soobin says, then leans his temple on the glass. He stares at Yeonjun’s steadfast expression, so stuck, so serious. If he stares long enough, he knows he wouldn’t know how to ever look away. If he feels hard enough, he knows that this feeling wouldn’t ever go away either. “Boyfriend?”

He watches in amusement as Yeonjun’s concentration breaks at that. He reddens, velvet, rose-colored. “Well,” he starts, then moves the grip down. His eyes widen a fraction. “I mean, like, if _you_ don’t mind being called _my_ boyfriend, then I wouldn’t, you know, _mind_ either - ”

The claw grips at nothing, then it springs up again empty handed.

Yeonjun puts his forehead on the glass, sighing, creating a spot of fog on the surface. He glances to the side, eyes precise on him like a target.

They’re so close like this, only a few inches away. Like this, he thinks he’s fond of him too. His eyes never lie.

Yeonjun’s eyes are always honest. Whatever he feels, you could see it swimming on the whites, on the two black bullets too.

That’s why Soobin’s always mesmerized. Yeonjun’s gaze has only been one thing to him: something fond. It’s always something fond.

“So, boyfriend?” Yeonjun asks, almost sheepish, a smile breaking on his mouth. There’s a vulnerability in the cracks of it. Soobin doesn’t want to dig in. He just wants to be in the middle.

Soobin scoots closer to him, reaching out to touch his face. Thumbs on his jaw.

“Yeah,” he whispers to the air. Yeonjun closes his eyes, so easy, defenseless. “Boyfriend.”

Yeonjun stumbles forward unseeingly, but he takes his mouth in a kiss, slightly off-point and a little too much on his skin than his lips.

“Boyfriend,” he repeats it to him, airless.]

\---

“So, six months of silence,” Yeonjun begins as he walks down the theater’s stairs, the seating like a parted sea on either side of him. Soobin follows him with a limp leg, breaths still laboured and heavy. He watches the bounce of Yeonjun’s hair as he skips down, lower, and lower, and lower, until Soobin leans to one of the seat tiredly, and stops altogether.

“Six months of silence,” he repeats, stopping too. He doesn’t turn around. “And now we’re _here_.”

Soobin’s heart aches. His body too. His body too, but it’s not from the apocalypse.

“You left for six months,” Yeonjun glances at him, his lips shut tight. His left eye, cloaked by shadow. He trembles in his dirty shirt, in his jagged, bloodied pants. He trembles, so visibly, everything else stuck in the confining sound of his throat, but he doesn’t say it.

Soobin aches. He still aches for him, guilt gnawing at his ribs.

“Yeonjun,” he says again. They haven’t talked about it. The break up - they haven’t even talked about that yet.

It was supposed to be a break.

It was supposed to be a temporary thing.

“Not a word,” Yeonjun goes on, then faces front again. His stance is sure, set. Immovable. “You haven’t said a _word_ since you left.”

Soobin feels the same fear underneath his skin. Like six months ago when he closed the door on Yeonjun, and he left, and never came back.

“I didn’t know what to say to you,” he says quietly. He never knew how to reach out to him. Yeonjun always feels like an unreachable thing. Unattainable, even when he was under his skin.

He’s someone he still can’t figure out, even now.

“I waited for you,” Yeonjun says and drops down, sitting himself down on the stairs. “I waited for _you_ , you asshole, I waited all those months for you to - ” he moves his hands around, that stretching thing between his fingers, “To say _anything,_ a text, a call, I waited for you to show up at my door - ”

Soobin moves to sit himself on the stairs too, just a few steps above him. He stares at his own hands. The lights are barely-here. The ceiling’s light is dimming, a flicker of gold. It illuminates the top of Yeonjun’s hair like fire.

“Would you open the door for me if I came?”

He’s unneeded. He’s always been unneeded. Yeonjun had enough friends. He had enough _life_. Yeonjun had Taehyun and Huening Kai, and he never needed him.

Yeonjun huffs at him. He puts his temple on one of the chair’s arm. “I wouldn’t,” he says, not even a whisper. “You didn’t even want to come back.”

“You didn’t want me to come back either,” Soobin retorts bitterly.

Yeonjun glances up at him again, this time his eyes aren’t anger-fueled. They’re clear, almost transparent. He gives him a pointed gaze, eyes travelling down. “You’re hurt.”

Soobin numbly nods. He can’t feel his wounds, just his heart. “Yeah.”

There’s a beat of silence. Yeonjun gets up, not looking at him. “Follow me.”

\---

[“Do you want to know something?”

Soobin raises a brow at him. “What?”

Yeonjun presses his lips on the top of his hand. Not a kiss, just a graze. Then he breaks into a grin; so wide it hurts. So genuine it hurts.

“I have a stupid crush on you,” he says bashfully, still tugging him in. “Sorry.”

“It is a little stupid,” Soobin teases, but relents anyway, holding his hand tighter. “Not the crush, just you.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

He bends down to meet his eyes. “I’m a little stupid too,” he whispers. This is one in a million chance, he’s favored, he’s lucky. “Sorry.”

Yeonjun laughs, not strained, “I think I might like you a little more than that. Like, a lot more than that.”

Soobin knocks his forehead to him. “I’m the fool then,” he says, something fond in his voice too. “I’m always the fool.”]

\---

The theater’s bathroom is nice.

It’s dingy, the light dangling on the ceiling is broken, but the room’s still intact. Some of the sinks are cracked on the edges, some losing most part of it, but they’re working, at least.

Soobin stares at himself on the mirror, shoulders moving as he breathes. He looks expectedly worn-out, worn-down. His face is covered in dust and dirt, smeared blood from where he touched it with his hand.

Yeonjun stares at him on his reflection, their gaze meeting like that; not really parallel. He looks almost unreal here, like a figment of his imagination.

“Clean yourself up first,” he says. Soobin’s heart clenches involuntarily, even when his voice sounds harsh, not tending. He used to be more tender, with him, more delicate.

Soobin can’t help it. “Why are you helping me?”

“Of course I am, you’re hurt _,_ ” he says through gritted teeth. “Do you expect me to just throw you out?”

“It’s not that,” he exhales, strained. “I just don’t expect you to - after - ”

“Expect me to _what_? Care?” he crosses his arms. Everything about him is hostile. “It’s not about you, don’t flatter yourself. If I threw you out right now and you got killed, the blood is on my hand. I don’t want that.”

“No worries,” he says, a taunting tilt of his head. “I won’t die for you.”

Yeonjun meets his gaze one more time before leaving without a word.

\---

[“Gyu, I really like him.”

“Yeonjun-hyung?”

“Yeah,” Soobin says, breathing out. He hasn’t said that to anyone else, to a different heart. “A lot, like, _a lot_.”

“You love him, right?”

It’s so simple in Beomgyu’s mouth. Soobin nods. “I do.”

Beomgyu tugs his shoulders until he lies on the bed, his head on his lap. Soobin immediately melts, always finding comfort in his best friend. Doesn’t hurt that he lives just a room away.

“Then?”

“Then,” he begins, an ache in his chest. “Then I should let him know?”

Beomgyu doesn’t tease him like he usually does, simply smoothing down the hair on his temple soothingly. “He loves you too, hyung,” he says.

Soobin aches for that, closing his eyes on Beomgyu’s knee. “I’m scared of how much I feel for him.”

“That shouldn’t be a scary thing, you know.”

“What if he left?”

“Then he left.”

Soobin smacks his shin, even he though he knows what he means. That’s not his part to decide. His part is _loving_. That’s it, that’s all there is to it. “This just, feels, real.”

Beomgyu knows that. Beomgyu knows that there has never been anyone else.

Yeonjun’s skin never felt temporary. The heat on his mouth. The length of his arms - they’re caged, imprinted, _home_. It scares him how much he simply feels.

“I know,” he says softly. “That’s not a bad thing, hyung.”

Soobin thinks about the club. Yeonjun was a spotlight, he never needed lights. He danced with his body on fire. When he thinks about him like this, such an open, loud voice, Soobin thinks he’s out of his league.

How could he ever give him that? The fire underneath his skin, the bright noise of the club? The growing forest fire that doesn’t need to be tamed. How could he ever give him that?

“I’m scared that,” he gulps it down. “I can’t give him what he wants.”

He remembers how Yeonjun’s friends dance with him. They look like they belong. In the crowd, in the middle of everything. They’re not sidelines.

“How do you know what he wants if you never told me what _you_ want?”

It’s terrifying what he would do for him. He’d do anything. He’d stuck his feet on the dance floor even if he didn’t like noise. He’d stay in the club even if he wanted to go home.

Soobin thinks this is his part too: telling him how he feels. It’s not just about loving, it’s about speaking. It’s about professing a voiced heart.

He nods against Beomgyu’s pants. “Okay.”

“Can I give you an advice?”

Soobin takes what he can get. “Sure.”

“Just,” he begins, his hands halting on his hair. “Just don’t mess it up.”

“I won’t,” Soobin looks up at him. “Promise.”]

\---

Soobin sits cross-legged at the stage, watching quietly as Yeonjun moves to take his health kit.

It’s evident that he’s been here for awhile. He knows where to go, his steps sure and not hesitating. Soobin stretches his legs out underneath him, sighing as a surge of relief washes over him. He can’t remember when was the last time he had an open chance just to exist, not running out of time, not chased with a life he can’t have anymore.

He hasn’t done anything but run. Not just since the apocalypse.

Since six months ago too.

“Where were you?” Yeonjun asks flatly, kneeling in front of him. He drags the kit across the dusty wood of the stage, creaking. Soobin opens it and sees antiseptic, some cotton, a few strips of bandages. It’s not much, but more than enough in a time like this. He wonders where Yeonjun even got it from.

“It was already here,” he answers his unspoken question, a hand coming up to wipe the left side of his face. He’s still guarded, the bloodied knife only a few inches from his body.

“Thanks,” Soobin says, taking the antiseptic from the kit. He eyes it, the swimming liquid, only a few drops of it left. He doesn’t think he needs this much. His leg just hurts, a lot more than it’s supposed to, but he can bear it. The scars will heal eventually. They’re mostly scratches anyway. They will all heal. It’s not an emergency.

He stares at the bareness of Yeonjun’s open hands, splayed on the stage.

There are lines of scars, both dried and fresh, past his knuckles, past the joints on his fingers. There’s a new one on the side of his wrist. It looks like it’s been treated before, but it’s not healed yet.

“I was alone at my apartment,” Soobin says quietly, pressing the cotton on the open lid of the antiseptic. He waits until it dampens. “I didn’t go out for a week.”

Soobin stops to hand him the cotton. “Here,” he says. “Use it.”

Yeonjun isn’t looking at him, but a crease appears on his forehead. “You’re hurt,” he says gratingly. “Not me.”

“You’re hurt too,” he insists.

“I’m fine,” Yeonjun mutters indignantly, meeting his gaze. “How did you get out?”

He sighs, overwhelmed by the sudden relief to know that Yeonjun’s alive. He’s been alone since the outbreak happened; that’s four weeks of surviving, not a single sound from someone else’s mouth. Not even his.

_Yeonjun’s alive. He’s here._

“The electricity went out,” he says, flipping the cotton between his two fingers. He misses his home, he thinks, the safe walls of his room. They were always just walls.

Now it’s a reminder that he was once human.

“My food supplies ran out,” he blows a breath, tired all down to his bones. When he finally gets this peace, just to sit down, just to _speak,_ he feels it up his spine, up his shoulders. The three weeks running - it’s melting here, even to the aching throb of his legs and his injured ankle. “I had to get out eventually, so I did. It took me a few days to get out of the building. I barely made it.”

He was terrified out of his mind. The day it broke, there are banging, rushing sounds on his door. He stared at the light on his ceiling until it died in a static spark.

Soobin killed his first zombie on his third day. He cried when it went limp, its throat gushing. He didn’t know who it used to be. He wondered about its name, the moments before it turned, and if it knew what was coming. He thought about the people that it used to love when the heart wasn’t infected.

It made him think about Yeonjun.

Soobin wasn’t sure if he survived. That was the only thing that made him keep going. Just the faint chance that he would see him again. That Yeonjun was still alive, somewhere.

And he is. He’s _here_.

Yeonjun doesn’t respond. Instead, he drags his knees up to his chest and stays quiet, still watching him.

“How about you? Where were you?”

“Out,” Yeonjun says quietly, bottom lip worried. “I was out alone when the virus started spreading.”

“Then?”

“Then I hid under a car,” he goes on, voice trembling. “Everyone was scrambling for safety, running, but I didn’t want to run, I was too scared to run. I waited until everyone was _gone_. It was a matter of minutes. It was the most noise I’ve ever heard in my life, then it’s just - _silence_. Like everyone disappeared out of thin air. After that, it’s just this... inhuman noise. An echo, so deep like an earthquake.”

Soobin knows what he means. That’s what he heard too in his apartment, when there was banging, so loud against his door, like there’s a living entity in the sound alone.

“When I came out from under the car, the zombies turned... wild. They needed something to eat, something to bite into. No one was human then, so I ran. It wasn’t a place to stay,” he audibly gulps, like he’s reliving it again, his knuckles white and pale around his knife. “I didn’t know how I survived. Or why.”

 _You have to_ , he wants to tell him. _You have to survive or I wouldn’t know what to do with myself._

Yeonjun stares wordlessly at the untended cotton in his hand, but the urgency is felt between them. It’s final, irrefutable. Soobin rolls the edge of his pants up until he sees the gash on his left ankle, then presses the cotton down on the wound.

“It took me awhile to realize they’re only attracted to sound,” he says lowly, alarmed. Like he’s waiting for them to barge in this deserted stage. He’s tensed and aware of everything. “They can’t see unless we make a noise.”

“They’re always hungry though,” Soobin says. For flesh. For him. For Yeonjun too.

“Yeah,” he nods, face grim.

The silence doesn’t feel dragged out; just melancholic. It’s their first time after six months. Just to talk, just to _exist._ God, Soobin was a coward.

The first thing he did was run. When it was too much, he ran the other way. That’s who he is, he runs when he’s scared.

“That was all of it,” Soobin says quietly, swishing the bottle of antiseptic, only a few drops left.

Yeonjun shrugs at him, eyes weighed. “It’s fine. You needed it.”

Soobin nods, puts the bottle back on the kit. The cotton is now blood-red, hot-burnt. He’ll throw it ouside.

“Where was Beomgyu?” Yeonjun asks him suddenly, eyes sharp, demanding. He leans forward to make sure their eyes meet. “When it broke out, where was he?”

Soobin rolls his pants down again. He isn’t hurt. He isn’t hurt that much.

“You said you were alone in the apartment,” he continues when he doesn’t answer.

“You said you didn’t care,” Soobin stares at him back. There’s an ache in his chest that hasn’t stopped growing.

Yeonjun opens his mouth. “You’ve been alone since.”

“Yeah,” he nods. Not just since the outbreak. Since six months ago too. “ _You’ve_ been alone since.”

That’s not a statement. That’s a question. Yeonjun knows that it is, so he nods as affirmation. Soobin wonders about Yeonjun’s friends, why he doesn’t want to say it.

He wonders if it’s the same reason why he doesn’t want to talk about Beomgyu either. He hopes it’s not.

\---

[Yeonjun nips at the skin on his jaw, wet lips on his trembling earthquake.

This is how he says it for the first time, a beating heart against his. Yeonjun’s open palm on his chest. He feels his heartbeat pulsing, pushing, shoving on him. Like it’s begging for Yeonjun.

 _More,_ it says. _I want more._

“Soobin-ah,” he whispers, tingling at the way his voice always is, then it remains warm on the flesh of his mouth. “I think,” he says, so quiet, his fingers brushing his hair tenderly. “I think I might love you.”

Soobin holds on to his neck. Feels him pulsing, just as much.

“I think I might love you back,” he admits, burning all over. Yeonjun’s hair drags down to his face. He’s as close as his own heart. He’s as close as the rows on his rib cage. He’s as close as his lungs - to him, to him, to him - they’re all inside of him. “Is that okay?”

Yeonjun smiles on his smile. “Yeah,” he whispers, kissing him again. “Love me, Soobin.”

And he thinks, his heartbeat pushes it back on Yeonjun’s palm again. _I’ll love you forever,_ it beats, and hits, and thumps. He wonders if Yeonjun could decode them, these tuned dots.

_I think I will love you forever._

“You,” Soobin gets up to pin him under. Yeonjun obliges immediately, surrendering. He looks up to him with that something fond in his eyes - so unreachable, and yet for him only. Unreachable, but reserved.

“Me?” Yeonjun peers at him innocently, batting his eyelashes. His hair spreads around him. “What about me?”

And he thinks, _you’re incredible,_ and _you’re lovely_ , and _I can’t get enough of you_.

“I want to say it again,” he says, heart breaking apart. Not hurting, simply enamored - by the jutting bones peeking from his collar, by the soft zit underneath his jaw, by the devastating hands around his neck, his touch a something fond too.

Yeonjun parts his lips, seemingly as overwhelmed as he is. “Say it then.”

“I love you,” Soobin admits, heartbreaking once again. Not hurting, but so in love he doesn’t know what to do with it.

The hands tug him closer, and he knows he’s not alone, a smile on his, a smile on his heartbeat, a smile on his ribs, a smile on the up-and-down of his breathing, a smile on his - ]

\---

“Thanks for, you know,” Soobin pauses and gets up, heart in his throat. He doesn’t even have anything with him, just the knife he stole from a house down the block. It’s not even functional anymore, the handle broke, and the edge of it is almost blunt. He needs to find another weapon.

It’s late, definitely past midnight, he thinks, but that doesn’t matter for awhile now. He’s just going to search for something, _anything,_ really, a backpack, supplies, and he’d go.

He doesn’t know where he’s heading. He doesn’t know if there’s any reason left to keep going.

This is the reason why he didn’t give up. The boy who doesn’t want anything to do with him now.

“Letting me stay,” he finishes, letting out a heavy breath. Yeonjun stares at him with something indecipherable, clouded. He can’t read him. There’s nothing there.

Soobin takes his time to look at him, because this is probably the last time they will ever see each other. He sees the scar on his temple, the dried blood on his skin.

It’s not the time. Not the place either, but he misses him.

“I’ll - I’ll go,” he says, worrying his lip. “Goodbye, Yeonjun.”

Yeonjun closes his eyes. He shakes his head, slowly, pained, like it’s taking everything out of him, that simple thing. When he opens them again, he looks right at him.

It’s faint, but there. The water pooling on the bottom of his eyes.

“You don’t have to,” he says, the mask breaking down, just a little peek. He looks scared right now. He didn’t look like this when he killed the zombie. He didn’t look like this when he put his knife on his skin, his eyes molten rock.

Right now, he looks terrified.

“I mean,” he forces it out, a drawn out sigh. “You’re hurt, you can’t even walk. I don’t know, just stay the night. I guess.”

Soobin wants to cry too. He wants to cry, and hug him, and tell him that he didn’t mean to go. He wants to tell him that he felt unwanted, so he left.

But it’s never because he didn’t love him enough.

He loved him, more. He loves him, still.

This is nothing much, nothing meaningful, but he feels his heart brimming full. He’s wanted to hear that, for a long time, he thinks:

 _Stay_.

He never knew if he wanted him to stay.

“This is not because I care,” Yeonjun adds, fleetingly. “I just don’t want you to - ”

“Die,” he finishes it for him, laughs because it’s ridiculous. “I know, don’t worry. I know.”

“Okay, just don’t,” Yeonjun’s lips break into a smile, so dull. But it’s there. “Don’t think too much of it.”

“Promise,” Soobin shows him his pinky, sheepish. Yeonjun cracks a proper smile.

“Okay,” he nods, then points the top row of the seats. “That’s where I’ll be.”

Soobin nods too. “I can guard first. You can sleep.”

Yeonjun doesn’t try to get him out of it, simply nods and climbs upstairs. Soobin watches him go.

\---

[“Hey,” Soobin says, staring at Yeonjun’s focused eyes on the tv. The sounds are loud, Huening Kai is loud, the thumping of their controllers like an alarm. “Let’s go home.”

Yeonjun glances at him for a second, before going back to the screen. “Wait, wait - let me finish this round first - ”

Soobin goes to take his bag from the couch and slings it wordlessly as he stands up. He watches them as the ache pounds his head and all the way up his arms - the smile on Yeonjun’s lips, the familiarity, the way this screams home.

Huening Kai laughs again. It rings like something he can’t have.

“Lower your voice,” Taehyun comes from the kitchen with chips in his hands, hissing at his boyfriend. Huening Kai ignores him and laughs even louder.

Yeonjun is clearly winning the race, but Kai is not far behind him. He knocks his bumper to his trunk. It makes Yeonjun scream as the finish line comes in view.

“Taehyun, I love your boyfriend, but fuck him,” he seethes, leaning forward, doing the final push.

Yeonjun wins the race. Kai puts his head on his hands defeatedly. “I hate this.”

“Yeah, fuck you, Kai,” Taehyun chimes in playfully, toeing the side of his body. Kai moves over to Taehyun’s side and rests his head on his shoulder.

“I hate losing,” Kai says with a pout.

Taehyun pats his cheek. “I know,” he says consolingly. “Get better next time then.”

They’re sickly domestic, Soobin thinks it’s adorable.

“Hey,” he says to them, and points at the door. “I’m going home, it’s late.”

“Bye, Soobin-hyung.”

“Okay, bye hyungie. Come over again!”

Soobin tugs at Yeonjun’s hand, but he stops him in his track.

He looks at him, confused, as dread comes. “You’re not coming with me?”

Yeonjun winces guiltily, “No, I have a work thing to go to first. I just opened my phone - ”

“But you said you’ll come over after this.”

“I know, I’m sorry, it’s really sudden,” he thumbs at his skin in reassurance, “I’ll make it up to you, promise. I’ll come to your place first thing in the morning tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Soobin nods, even as his throat burns. He misses him.

“Are you mad?”

Not mad. Never mad. Just sad, maybe. Second choice, never a first option. Even with his friends. Soobin’s just there. Not a centerfold, not a limelight. Not to him.

“No, it’s okay,” he says. “See you?”

Yeonjun’s lips are tight, though it shakes on the edge. But he still leans in to kiss his cheek.

“See you,” he says it back, then, expectant: “Love you?”

It sounds like a question. Soobin answers it with a full stop.]

\---

The zombies are almost, always hungry on the way to dawn.

Soobin was dozing off in his seat when he hears that familiar rumble, so strong like an earthquake. It bumps against the walls of the building, bangs on the front door.

He springs up immediately, alert. It’s difficult to melt into the achiness of his body when he’s wary of everything. The noise still makes the hair on his arms spikes up, the grumble reminding him of his deserted apartment. Soobin turns around in fear before spotting Yeonjun on the other side of the row. He’s almost hidden, sitting on the floor, his head leaning on the seat in front of him.

He blinks his eyes open, yawning. Soobin’s heart burns at the sight. So familiar, so human.

“They’re so annoying,” he says hazedly. “I just want to sleep, damn.”

Soobin lets out a big laugh that comes from the bottom of his stomach, relief seeping through him to see him like that. “Yeah,” he nods. “Annoying.”

Yeonjun meets his gaze. He’s still in a daze, but he smiles at him. It doesn’t look like he’s aware of it.

“Go back to sleep,” Soobin rasps.

He’s not guarded. Not like the tight line on his lips when he saw Soobin for the first time, now his eyes are stark, a sheer. Right now, he looks peaceful.

Soobin wonders when was the last time he’s slept, and if this is his first after awhile. Yeonjun knocks his forehead on the seat again, letting Soobin take watch. He’s trusting him with his life.

Soobin goes back to his seat. The theater continues to shake, but he’s settled.

\---

[“Can I come over?”

Soobin holds the bridge of his nose, sighing, gripping his phone tightly to his ear. His shoulders are tight. He just wants to cry, he’s had a bad day. A hard knot on his chest, a pulsing headache.

He wants to cry to Yeonjun. More than anything, he wants his hands on his eyelids, his hands on his shoulders. He just wants his boyfriend right now.

There’s so much noise on the other side of the line. There always is.

Soobin’s never a part of it.

“ _I’m out with Kai_ ,” Yeonjun says after a beat. He laughs to something he couldn’t hear. It brings a searing heat down his spine. He’s never been a part of it. “ _Why? Are you okay?_ ”

Soobin heaves a sigh, pressing his lips together. “Yeah,” he draws it out, feeling guilty all of a sudden. Yeonjun’s having fun, who is he to ruin that? “I’m fine. I’ll just - call you when you’re not busy.”

He ends up crying alone.]

\---

Yeonjun appears like a cloak, a figure blocking the light. He looks right at him.

“You fell asleep,” he says plainly. “I took guard for you.”

Soobin blinks a couple of time before Yeonjun becomes a clear picture. He thinks about when he used to wake up to his face and it wasn’t a burden to reach out.

“Oh,” he wipes his face with his hand, didn’t remember when his consciousness slip out of his grasp like that. He straightens, wincing. “Oh, I’m sorry, I must’ve been more tired than I thought.”

Yeonjun simply stares at him wordlessly. There’s no reason to it.

“You’re hurt,” he says.

Soobin’s leg will heal. His scars will heal. He still nods, because it’s never about the wounds on his skin.

“You’re hurt too,” he says quietly.

Yeonjun lets it linger, then shrugs aimlessly, looking around the expanse of the theater like there’s more to it than just walls.

“Listen,” he begins, voice small. “I think I’m going to stock up. I barely have anything left here. Maybe I’m leaving, for real. I’ve been hiding for too long.”

“Okay,” Soobin swallows the lump, isn’t really sure where this is going.

“You’re hurt,” Yeonjun repeats.

He lowers his eyelids until he becomes nothing but a figment. “And?”

“And,” he shifts uneasily, looking down at his feet. “Are you going to stay?”

“While you’re gone?”

Yeonjun’s eyes are scared. This is a pleading, even though it’s voiceless. He nods slowly, faintly, not enough.

Once upon a time, he would do anything for him. It felt like that, once, in his quiet room, in his deprived sound. Soobin thinks he finally understand it was never the case.

Soobin shakes his head. “No,” he says, standing up. His left ankle wobbles but his heart is set. “I’m coming with you.”

“But you’re hurt - ”

“Of course I’m hurt, we’re in an apocalypse,” he says, softly, melts when Yeonjun smiles. “Don’t act like you aren’t as hurt as me.”

The morning light isn’t as harsh as the night. It’s like waking up, the moment Yeonjun hand found his when he was tangled between his sheets, the light tiptoeing his nose, down to his mouth, to the cliff of his neck, and there was nothing that Soobin wanted more than to become the sun.

This is exactly that: this is like waking up.

“Okay,” Yeonjun nods at him. It collapses, falling apart. Soobin is still in love with him.

\---

[It’s a Taylor Swift song.

Of course it is.

Yeonjun has a dopey smile on his lips, and his eyes gleam under the light of his room. He looks beautiful, all skin, all black hair, all long fingers, white teeth that sink.

“Soobin-ah,” he calls with that voice, silky. Taylor Swift sings in the background, not muted, imprinted.

 _I’m reaching out and I can’t tell you why_.

“Do you want me to dance with you?” Soobin says as he comes to his arms, letting Yeonjun embrace him. A hand on his neck, a hand on his hip.

Yeonjun leans forward and rests his head on his chest. “Yeah, slow dance with me or something.”

Soobin holds him back. How could he not when he’s like this? When he presses close and it hurts? When he pushes into his rib cage and he’s a heartbeat away from bliss?

_I’m caught up in you. I’m caught up in you._

“You’re,” he begins, but doesn’t know what to end it with. Yeonjun is so warm, so close. Everything he craves.

Yeonjun smiles against his shirt, then he pulls back just to look at him. Something fond. It’s something fond again in his eyes. “Yes?”

It’s been five months now. It was on their fifth date when he had the revelation, and it breaks here now, as he looks at him and he realizes that this is the most terrified he’s ever been in his life.

He could love him forever.

Under the ceiling of his room, in this serenity. He could love him forever.

“You’re ridiculous,” he whispers brokenly. Yeonjun doesn’t stop smiling at him. Maybe he has to stop one day, so he knows how to look away from its want.

Yeonjun holds his face, tugging it closer to his. His breath is palpable like this, and Soobin can’t help but repent. “Tell me what you really want to say.”

_And when you’re close I feel like coming undone._

Soobin touches his spine, then breathes. “I think you will be the death of me.”

Yeonjun shows his love like this, with his touch, with the way the joints of his fingers fold to take him in, and he’s never too far from his own heart.

He leans forward to bump their foreheads together in a tender ache.

“I think I love you,” he whispers.

_Come on, say that we’ll be together._

If he closed his eyes, he could pretend he would never leave. That he isn’t holding him back here, that he doesn’t have somewhere else to go.

His room, his apartment - this isn’t an enough sky for someone like him.

Yeonjun kisses him, softly, and Soobin wishes he could give him more. As his lips crash into his like an airplane, and there’s no more air, he wishes that his room doesn’t have a roof. He isn’t his home. He will never be, not when his home’s a box.

“I think I love you too,” he whispers back, a lull that breaks.

Yeonjun touches him like clouds, cotton-filled hands, and Soobin fears. Loves.]

\---

Yeonjun gives him a gun.

“I stole it from a car,” he explains as he walks, rummaging through the thick, overgrown leaves out the back door. Soobin holds it closely around his palm, the metallic, coldness to it stinging. “I stole a lot of things from cars.”

“How about the noise? You had to break the windows, right?”

“If I’m lucky, they’re already broken,” he says. Yeonjun is so much more composed than him, more put-together. Soobin knows he tends to overcompensate though, knows that he likes to pretends that he’s okay when there’s something wrong. Yeonjun puts on a brave face when he’s scared, that’s what he does. “But in case of an emergency, it’s worth the supplies.”

The streets are quiet. Deserted.

He gets why cars are useful because they’re _everywhere_. In this singular one, they’re stacked, dented together haphazardly. Sometimes there are still zombies inside.

“There are only two bullets,” he tells him quietly. The rocks underneath his shoes make a creaking, alerting sound. “Use it wisely. I don’t have anything else.”

Soobin watches quietly as Yeonjun walks beside him, fingers around his backpack straps. It looks sturdy and light. He’s different under the actual sun; more close-up. More present.

He’s more freshened up now than last night, his face isn’t as beat up, his hands aren’t as wet and red.

“I have a question,” Yeonjun squints at him, tight-lipped.

“Yeah?”

“Are you with anyone?”

“I told you I’ve been alone since - ”

“That’s not what I meant,” Yeonjun cuts him off. “Are you with anyone?”

_Oh._

Soobin watches the grass on the cracked road. He feels open like this, in an open street, in a place where a sound is a gamble to his one life.

He sees one zombie in front of a closed door of a house. Its forehead knocks on the wooden surface repeatedly that it creates a rhytmical melody. As they walk further, it becomes nothing but noise.

“No,” Soobin replies.

Yeonjun’s shoes are bloodied, the shoelaces a deep crimson. He watches them stopping for a moment before moving again.

“Of course not,” he goes on, quieter. He’s not scared of the zombies. He’s scared of this - a confrontation. What he should’ve done before he ran away.

“Were you with anyone?”

“No, not since you,” he shakes his head, heart lurching. _Not since you,_ that’s always been the case with him. _Not since Yeonjun, never since Yeonjun._ He turns his head to look at him. “Are you?”

Yeonjun meets his gaze back in a heavy silence. What comes next is frail, faint. He shakes his head too. “I told you I waited for you.”

Soobin wants to go back. When the world hasn’t ended and Yeonjun wasn’t a far-fetched boy.

Right now, the rose-coated shoes stop. They’re stuck on the ground.

“Soobin-ah,” he calls quietly. “Why did you leave?”

\---

[“Baby,” Yeonjun pats his cheek softly. “I’m going.”

Soobin looks at him, eyes drooping down. He reaches to hold his hand, even when his heart brittles silently. He wants him around; he doesn’t want him to leave.

God, he just doesn’t want him to leave. If he did, Soobin’s afraid he would never come back.

“You’re meeting Taehyun?” he asks, tilting his head.

“Yeah, he needs help picking out a birthday present for Kai.”

“Okay,” he says. It’s unreasonable, he _knows_ , he’s being unreasonable. This isn’t out of the blue, it isn’t heartbreak. He feels left out, as though the quietness in his room isn’t enough for Yeonjun. Isn’t worthy.

This is what heaven feels like to Soobin: lying around in his bed, Yeonjun’s hand on his pillow, his laugh on his chest. That’s what heaven is to him. The draping silence, but it’s for them. The dripping white noise, but Yeonjun opens his mouth and his teeth aren’t sharp.

This is the third time Yeonjun leaves early for his friends this week. Is he holding him back?

Soobin doesn’t want to bother him. It feels like he’s the one taking his time away from hanging out with his friends. He feels guilty that this is only thing he knows how to give: just the space of his room. Not the loud voice that Yeonjun clearly seeks.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Soobin sighs, pursing his lips. “Sure,” he says, then adds. “If you want.”

Yeonjun blinks at him. “If I want?”

“Yeah,” he nods, giving him a faint smile. “If you want,” he repeats. _If you want_. You could leave, if you want. _I don’t want to bother you._

 _I don’t want to bother you, Yeonjun_.

Their held hands, Soobin fears that. The way his room’s light bounces on Yeonjun’s hair, he fears that. He looks good here. He always looks good here, under the lights, the center piece of his room. He looks good when his feet dangle on the edge of his bed, and his eyelids are closed as he breathes.

He looks so good here, in his home. This is all he could give. He can’t give him noise. Not more than this.

Yeonjun takes the time to look at him, searching, a brief hurt in his eyes before it’s gone. He simply sighs at him, softly, then travels his hands up to his face, up to his cheeks.

“Okay,” he says, a kiss to his temple. It’s too warm. “See you tomorrow.”

Soobin doesn’t answer.]

\---

It’s a mall.

The parking lot is a mess. The cars are broken, wrecked bumpers, the windows are shattered and bursting open. They’re not in a perfect row anymore, zigzagging, dented together like glue.

Soobin purses his lips together. It’s too quiet. Too open. He shivers.

Yeonjun croses his arms in front of his chest, then exhales audibly through his mouth. “Sometimes I still don’t understand this,” he starts. “How did we end up like this?”

No one’s cleaning this mess. No one’s going to come and save them.

It’s every man for himself.

He thinks he took it for granted. Everything. Even his slow mornings. Even the days where he just wanted to go home from work. Even when the world was unending and unkind.

He took that for granted.

Turning his head, he takes his time to look at Yeonjun. He took this for granted too.

“How did we end up like this?” Soobin repeats him, slower, quieter. That’s not what he means. He’s not talking about the apocalypse.

Yeonjun doesn’t look away, he meets his gaze steadily. He demands an answer too.

“I was scared,” Soobin admits then, pressing his lips together. “I was scared of you.”

“Why?”

Soobin stares at Yeonjun’s shoes again. They aren’t moving. They’re beside his.

That’s always been the case, hasn’t it? Yeonjun’s shoes - they’ve never been away.

“I thought you didn’t need me,” he breathes. It’s a lot to say. It’s a lot to say when he still feels that way, even now. “Or wanted me.”

Yeonjun moves to stand in front of him. The soles of their shoes touch.

“Why?”

“Because you were always busy, and you always had something to do, we didn’t really talk about _anything_ \- ” Soobin finally admits, after so long concealing it deep inside of him, “You had your friends, you’ve known them for _so long,_ and I feel like - I’m not important enough to you - ”

“I’m sorry,” he rushes out, voice soft. He’s almost an arm-length away. “But Soobin-ah, that’s not true.”

“You’re just so - ” Soobin clams his eyes tight. This shouldn’t be hard to say, it was six months ago. What does he have to lose? Right now, what else does he have to lose? “You. I’m scared of that, Yeonjun.”

He asks again, gentle. “Why are you scared of me?”

“I’m not like you. We’re two different people. I can’t - I can’t be like _you_ \- ”

“I never asked you to be like me,” he cuts him off, breath growing harsher, body going closer. “Soobin, when have I _ever_ asked you to be like me? I like - I loved you for - ”

Soobin backs away from him. “It felt like you were okay without me, because you had your friends, and your everything _else_ \- ”

He hears his steps, forward to him. He sighs exasperatedly, tiredness etched to it. “Is that why you pushed me away?”

“Did I push you away?”

“Yeah,” Yeonjun’s voice shakes. “You never wanted me around. You - you always left _first_ \- you don’t even want me to come over anymore - you - ”

Soobin lifts his head, meeting his eyes. “I didn’t know you felt like that,” he mutters, heart splintering. He didn’t even realize that he -

“Is that why you pushed me away?” Yeonjun asks again.

He nods. He nods, teeth grinding together in his mouth.

“Soobin-ah,” he says. The sides of their shoes meet. He sees Yeonjun’s hands stretching, opening wide. “I’ve always wanted you. I’m sorry I didn’t make you feel that way. But I do, I’m sorry.”

He needs it. He needs to hear that again. Right now, when they’re not binded by anything else, he wants to hear that again.

“You left because you thought that’s what I wanted?” Yeonjun asks, then reaches out. He feels Yeonjun’s warmer fingers on his, intertwining. The rough edges of his scars. Soobin holds them back. Soobin holds them back, weak, his fingernails aching.

Yeonjun leans forward. His forehead knocks his. Surrendering. Choosing, staying.

“I thought you left because that’s what _you_ wanted,” he goes on quietly.

Soobin shakes his head, their hair, coarsed, together. “No, of course not,” he utters in a hitched breath. “I got scared. I got scared and left.”

He thinks a love should be a voice. That’s terrifying: you don’t know if you would hear a sound back. If there would be an echo.

That’s what he learns, the last six months. A relationship is filled with voice. Otherwise, it’ll just be an empty room.

“I’m sorry,” Yeonjun says in a desperate breath. The world ended, the world has ended, and Soobin wants nothing more. Than _this_. Than Yeonjun’s simple, unkempt spoken love. “Soobin, I missed you - ”

This time, he catches it. Bounces the sound right back.

“I missed you too,” he hooks his pinky with his, a promise.

\---

[“I can stay the night,” Yeonjun whispers on his ear, his mouth leaving a feather-like shiver in its wake. Soobin closes his eyes and lets it linger, pulls him closer by the waist. Their bodies are a heat in his closed room. He misses him, god, he misses tangling with him, feeling each patch of his skin. He misses having him like this, like he’s supposed to be here.

It’s been so long since they had a time together. Yeonjun’s _always_ so busy, he always has plans, always, always, always a noise he can’t comprehend, can’t compete, can’t -

It comes crashing down. Yeonjun’s not supposed to be here, isn’t he?

He feels it nagging again, uneasiness climbing up his spine. He grips his hip to pull him back slightly. “You don’t have to go?”

Yeonjun’s breath is warm on his mouth. There are lines on his forehead. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t you have to go?”

“No,” he says quietly. His eyes turn a little sad, confused. “Why?”

Soobin stays still, deciding how to voice it out. “I don’t know,” he mumbles. “I thought you were leaving.”

Yeonjun searches him uncertainly. He backs away a little further until he’s not close anymore. “I just told you I can stay the night.”

“You’re not going to Kai and Taehyun’s?” Soobin prods impatiently, like he’s running out of time. “A work thing?”

“No?” he phrases it like a question. “You don’t want me to stay the night?”

“No, I was just - ” Soobin sighs until his shoulders slump. The thought grips on him like a relentless infection, an insecurity that roots deep. 

He keeps thinking about the club and how ethereal Yeonjun looks under it. He keeps thinking about the noise that always comes with him - the friends, the life. Right now they’re under his sound-proof, stilled room. Soobin touches him again.

“Of course I do,” he says, the stark truth in it overpowering. He leans in and places his hands on his neck. Doesn’t know how to say it.

He just wants him to stay.

Even when he’s afraid that he’d go.

He can’t say it, not here. He’s afraid Yeonjun would hear his pleading on the bottom of his palms. He’s afraid Yeonjun would hear it on his pulse against his pulse.

Yeonjun circles his hands around his wrists, looking him straight in the eyes. “Okay,” he whispers gently. Yeonjun stays. He stays, despite the silence. “Okay, Soobin.”

 _Sorry,_ he says it with his thumb on his cheek. _I’m sorry I think you’re better off without me._

Yeonjun doesn’t say anything else, he simply kisses him until his lips part. Molds him into an open space too.]

\---

“I lied,” Yeonjun says when they’re inside the mall.

The outside world becomes an extended limb, non-existent now. The creak of the door makes him jolt.

There are zombies here. Quite a lot, dozens almost, just mindlessly roaming, bumping into things. There’s one by a table, there’s one by a wall, there’s one with a knife stuck to its cheek.

Soobin reflexively presses close to him, arms warming together in a reassurance. Yeonjun finds his hand again.

“About what?” he asks quietly, alert. Grips his hand wholly.

They start walking through the hallway. Every noise is a reminder that even a wrong move kills. Soobin watches as the broken lights make a flicker, flick, click, on the room, on the zombies’ greenish, rotten skin.

Yeonjun’s thumb presses on his wrist, like he’s dreading it, whatever he’s going to say, more than the zombies around them. “About being alone when the virus broke out,” he whispers.

The long hallway disperse wider. They’re in the middle of the mall now.

Specks of blood in the stilled water in the fountain. A zombie drowning in it, its dead body floating up. Soobin can’t feel anything else except the rushed hammer of his heartbeat. What an ominous sight. What a terrible, sinking sight.

“Who were you with?”

Yeonjun drags him away until he breaks his gaze on the red water. He doesn’t look nervous, even though his hand grasps him strong, and his steps are more wary.

“I was with them,” he says. His head flicks up to him.

“Taehyun and Kai?”

Yeonjun nods grimly at him. “Yeah,” he begins with a shudder. Soobin holds him tighter until their bones numb and ache. “We just had lunch, Taehyun and I went for the car first, Kai was still inside paying for our food - ”

Soobin knows where this is going. He dreads it, doesn’t wants to hear it. Remembers Huening Kai’s smile, Taehyun’s indulgence, remembers their tangled warmth under the cold lights, remembers their apartment and their home.

God, he doesn’t want to hear it.

“I remember the first zombie that I saw, walking right to me, and I remember how scared I was - ” he licks his lip audibly that Soobin winces. “Everything broke right then, and I held Taehyun’s hand, but he yanked it away - because, _because_ \- ”

Yeonjun stops abruptly, tugging at their held hands. He points at the colorful, now ominous section of the mall.

It’s where Yeonjun failed to give him the plushie. The arcade.

\---

[“Are you free on Saturday?”

Yeonjun goes silent for awhile. “I don’t know yet,” he replies. “I don’t think so.”

Soobin only nods. He’s used to it now, and shuts his mouth tight. “Okay.”]

\---

[“Are you free on Saturday?” Yeonjun asks him this time.

Soobin nods quietly. “Yeah, are you?”

“Yeah,” he says. He’s more than an arm-length away. He’s in a distance. They’re not at eye-level anymore. “Can I stay over?”

“If you want,” Soobin replies.

“Do you want me to?”

It doesn’t matter, doesn’t it? It doesn’t matter what he wants.

He shrugs, even as his organs tighten from the force of missing him, but he doesn’t want to bother him. “If you want,” he repeats.

Yeonjun looks at him dejectedly. None of them say anything.]

\---

[“Hey, I’m going home,” Soobin says in the middle of Huening Kai’s laughs and Taehyun’s screams.

Yeonjun lets go of his hand, and only nods. “Okay,” he says in a tight line. He’s drifting away. “Bye.”]

\---

This is like their fifth date. Even their closeness. Even the blinking, distracting of his eyelids at the prize.

Soobin stares as Yeonjun puts his forehead on the glass of the claw machine. The only part still intact, not broken. The rest of the shattered glass is beneath his shoes, bumpy. “Which one do you want?” he asks him with a tilt of his head. “Do you want the pink one? The teddy bear?”

He indulges him and nods. Smiles, because his heart hurts. “Yeah,” he says softly. “The pink one.”

Yeonjun pretends to move the grip of the claw machine, his forehead creasing seriously even as the claw stays on the roof, not budging. Then he smoothly puts his hand inside and takes the pink plushie.

“Ha!” he whispers in satisfaction, eyes glowing. He shoves it to his chest. “Got it.”

Soobin holds it, feeling the smooth fur on his skin. He touches it, but doesn’t look down, instead he stares at Yeonjun’s upturned, sad face.

There’s something hurting here.

Pretending that the world isn’t a broken place anymore. Pretending that they’re just on a date, not a supply run for Soobin’s wound. For Yeonjun’s reddish, open gash.

There’s something aching in the way he revels in it.

Yeonjun looks at him. They’re looking at each other.

And in this silence, Yeonjun doesn’t seek for sound. He simply leans forward to him and holds his hand, tighter, more terrified. More exhausted. Surrendering, caving in. They both crumble.

“Thank you,” Soobin whispers back. In this silence, he wants to give him silence. And maybe this is what he never saw. That Yeonjun never needed anything else either.

That it’s their held hands, their binded gaze, their magnet pull.

Maybe that was all enough. Maybe it’s always been enough.

Yeonjun doesn’t say anything. There’s no voice from him, but the lips move in a curve he understands. And his fingers move in a knot he knows.

He’s silent. He’s silent, and yet his eyes are something fond.

\---

[“Can I stay the night?” Yeonjun asks him on the edge of his bed. There’s another question there, overlapped.

Soobin stares at him. “You don’t have to,” he quietly says. It’s still there, nagging, climbing up his spine, still with an unwanted shiver of being unwanted. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

Yeonjun meets his gaze in a broken, tired way. He shakes his head, a laugh escaping his mouth. “Sure,” he says, like he just made up his mind.

They’re drifting apart.]

\---

They reach the domestic part of the mall on the second floor.

Yeonjun sits on a displayed bed, legs dangling by the edge. He looks at him playfully, and if Soobin ignored the dim lights on the ceiling, he could build his room around him, and they’re finally safe again.

This doesn’t have to fearful. This could be their usual Saturday morning.

This could be Soobin’s room, but he never pushed Yeonjun away. This could be a second chance. This could be a second chance of them, of him, of a night when he left and never come back.

This could be that. The world doesn’t have to end. Not now.

“Come here,” he says to him, so low.

Soobin comes. He crawls to the middle of the bed and Yeonjun slips his hands around him, sticky palms on his elbows. He exhales, chest tightening.

It’s been six months. He hasn’t been touched in six months. Not with these hands. Not with this skin, not with the way Yeonjun’s fingers always knobs at his bones like a pulse.

Soobin shivers, and holds him back desperately. His eyes sting hot.

“I miss sleeping on a bed,” Yeonjun chuckles. “My back aches so bad.”

Soobin drops himself on the bed, unintentionally twining limbs with Yeonjun again, just like they used to. It’s been six months. It’s been six months of a sickly air. An unshared oxygen. Now they’re together again.

“I know. I don’t like sleeping on the floor,” he admits quietly. Yeonjun wraps his body on him, an arm on the side of his body. He fits here. That’s how he knows - he fits here. So well, so right. “The theater’s an improvement.”

Yeonjun stares at him intently, gaze heavy. “Where are you going after this?”

Soobin purses his lips. “Wherever you are, if that’s okay,” he admits nervously, meeting his eyes. “I want to come with you. I want you to come with me. I just want - ”

“Is that really what you want?” Yeonjun asks, still fear-ridden.

“Yeah,” he nods his head, slowly but surely. This is what he was supposed to say. This is the truth he should’ve said six months ago before he closed the door on Yeonjun. “I want you with me.”

Yeonjun knows it isn’t just about now. It’s about them. It’s about their silence, now finally filled.

“I want you with me too,” he whispers, then he holds his hand tighter. He fidgets nervously, unsure, but it spills out of his mouth in stuttered beats. “Taehyun went back for Kai,” he says shakily. “He yelled at me _wait, Kai’s still inside_ and he just left.”

Soobin shuts his mouth tight, jaw set. He nudges him softly to keep going.

“I hid under the car until the chaos subsided, but when I came back for them, they were nowhere to be found,” he exhales audibly. A zombie grumbles somewhere behind them, but Soobin doesn’t budge. He stays. “I - regret not looking harder - maybe they were hiding too - but I just _left_ \- I was scared - ”

Soobin draws closer to him. “It’s okay,” he says. “It was an outbreak, no one knew how to handle it.”

Yeonjun closes his eyes, breathing harsher. “I just - I want to be naive and believe that they’re okay, together, somewhere, but the chance of that happening is, slim, right?”

He doesn’t say anything.

Yeonjun doesn’t need him to. He already knows the answer to that. “I’ve been friends with them for so long.”

“I know,” Soobin says softly. “I’m sorry, Yeonjun.”

“Do you want to tell me about Beomgyu?”

“He’s,” he opens his mouth, the lump coming back. The lump, heavier, guiltier. Undeterred. “He’s gone.”

He tugs at Yeonjun’s hand, nail grating his skin, and if it hurts, Yeonjun stays quiet.

“He was buying groceries when it broke out,” Soobin says quickly, doesn’t want to dwell on it. “I was a coward and stayed inside for a week, when I could’ve probably helped or something, I - ”

Yeonjun doesn’t say anything either, he simply waits for him to utter it out loud.

“When I got out, I saw him on our hallway, just a few doors away from ours,” he bites his lip until it stings, until it burns. “He was - he wasn’t him anymore, Yeonjun, he was - ”

Yeonjun grazes his thumb on his palm, and Soobin breathes.

“It looks like he’s turned for a long time, maybe since the start,” he says, guilt still gnawing at him. “The thought that maybe I could’ve saved him, but I couldn’t bring myself out because I was _scared_ , I can’t forgive myself that I was too paralyzed - ”

“We were all scared, Soobin,” Yeonjun’s voice blares in the quiet space. He’s consoling him, tending. “No one knew how to handle it. That includes you. We were just - we’re just trying our best.”

Soobin nods haltingly, still unsure. “Okay,” his puff of air evaporates. A piece of himself too. “Okay.”

“Let’s find an empty house after this,” Yeonjun says brightly. “I want a bed to sleep in. A safe place, for us.”

He chuckles quietly, finding the idea brilliant. Yeah, he wants that too. He wants a house for them. A bed for them. A shelter, a forever. He touches his face tenderly.

This is what it sounds like: _stay_.

It sounds like this, a silence that echoes. A silence that has a sound.

\---

[“Why don’t you talk to me anymore?”

Soobin bites his lip. “What are you talking about? I do talk to you.”

“No you don’t,” Yeonjun says quietly. He’s small like this. “You don’t talk to me about anything. Sometimes it feels like you open your mouth but I don’t hear you, say, _anything_.”

“You don’t talk to me either,” he snaps back, raising up. Yeonjun crosses his arms defensively, but Soobin goes on. “You don’t talk to me about your work, or about your day, you - act like I’m second choice to your friends - ”

“Because you never say anything either! How do you expect me to know that I - ”

“You’re better off without me,” he says.]

\---

After a quick trip to the pharmacy, Yeonjun drags him to the grocery store.

Between the two rows of the snack aisle, the open space is glaring, impending. Soobin watches Yeonjun quietly, fond as he makes grabby hands to the assortment of colorful choices of snacks.

Yeonjun puts them carefully on the floor. Soobin sits cross-legged in front of him, can’t help the bubble of happiness in his chest as Yeonjun opens the wrapper of a chocolate bar.

“Gross, it’s all gooey,” he groans as the sticky chocolate melts on his fingers. He still licks it off and hums satisfiedly. “It’s still good, try, please try it.”

Soobin feels the warmth of it clings to the roof of his mouth, a feeling he misses. “Please pack more of this,” he says through his bliss. Yeonjun laughs softly at him, patting his cheek reassuringly.

“Already did, don’t worry,” then he opens a packet of chips. The air puffs out. Soobin immediately sneaks his hand in to grab a handful of them.

Yeonjun squints at him, distracted. “Hey, what do you want to eat tonight?”

“Are you going to cook?”

“Sure, if we find a place,” he replies, visibly imagining it, “So what do you want?”

“Whatever we can find, I guess,” Soobin pops another chips into his mouth.

“We’re in a grocery, Soobin, we can find anything here,” he rolls his eyes at him. Soobin shoves him until he falls back, but Yeonjun only chuckles. “Seriously, what do you want? When else can we rob food and get away with it?”

“Are you saying the apocalypse is worth it? Just because we have all the food to ourselves?”

Yeonjun nods and finishes the last piece of the chips, crunching it audibly in his mouth. He grins and leans closer to him. “Yeah, definitely,” he whispers, eyes twinkling.“It also feels like we’re the only two people left on earth. Don’t you feel invincible? Like, we can do anything?”

Soobin smiles fondly at him, likes it, likes him. “I like that you’re the only person with me right now.”

“Really?” Yeonjun voices out, the edges of his temple crinkling. He’s genuinely asking.

Soobin holds his face, feeling him melt, “I don’t want anyone else,” he whispers, then grins. “You’re very strong, like my personal bodyguard or something. I feel super secured.”

“ _Rude_ ,” Yeonjun pouts at him. “You only want me for my muscles.”

“And if I do?”

Yeonjun pulls at his collar, and kisses him.

It’s all mouth, all teeth, all overlapping breaths. There’s something about coming home here, lodged between their ribs.

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” Yeonjun smiles quietly, tugging at his lip with his. A secret thing between them. “Not a dent,” he goes on, palms on the sides of his body. This is a second chance, he thinks, as their skin touch and tingle. This is a second chance. “Not a scratch. Not to you. Never again.”

Soobin takes him in, and shivers when a laugh breaks out of his chest, “Okay,” he says in complete surrender.

“Did you mean it?” Yeonjun asks on his mouth. “You don’t want anyone else, did you mean it?”

Soobin nods, closing his eyes. “Not just anyone,” he says. Yeonjun’s hands are on his neck. Yeonjun’s knee, Yeonjun’s sigh. He’s here, with him, seemingly out of control. “Anything, _anything_.”

He listens to it, Yeonjun’s silence. Then he opens his eyes, Yeonjun’s love.

“Just you.”

\---

[ _“_ Okay,” Yeonjun says, jaw set. “You’ve been itching to leave since you came, then just - ” he exhales harshly, “Just go then, if that’s what you want.”

Soobin wipes his face with his hand. “ _Fine_ ,” he says, a bitter taste in his tongue, then he goes on before he could even think about it. “Maybe we should take a break.”

Yeonjun freezes at that, face stilling, numb, pale. “What are you talking about.”

“You’re always busy anyway,” he fumes, the dam breaking at the sight, at the sudden confining air.

“And you don’t want me around! You just _shut off_ and you treat me like I’m never here!”

“I don’t know, maybe this is just - this is the best thing we should do - ”

“A break? Really? You want to take a break?”

“Yeah, maybe - that’s what we need right now, we’re _too_ \- ”

Too what? Too scared? He needs to backpedal there. It’s him. It’s _him,_ he’s scared.

Yeonjun’s eyebrows string together, out of place. “Just a break then?”

Soobin closes his eyes as it kicks in, the quick surrender in Yeonjun’s voice. The immediate nonresistant to the idea. Did he want this in the first place? Did he -

“Yeah, a break,” he croaks, pressing his lips together, “We need a break.”

Yeonjun’s eyes are motionless. They’re unmoving, blank paper. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Soobin’s voice shakes. He doesn’t think Yeonjun would just say yes, would just let him go like this. He stares at him searchingly.

Yeonjun stays quiet, not another sound from him. It’s answer enough for him. Soobin nods haltingly, but he moves and doesn’t turn back. The door closes behind him.

Soobin leaves. Yeonjun doesn’t stop him.]

\---

“How about instant ramen?”

Soobin laughs as the rocks crunch underneath his shoes. The streets are still quiet. He wonders if they’re really the last people alive. If it would be too bad if they were.

The moon gleams bright, cloaked by night.

“Whatever you want,” Soobin says. He turns his head to look at him. “You can cook me anything, whatever you want, I’ll eat it like it’s luxury or something - ”

“Why aren’t you teasing me? You usually say I make shit food.”

Soobin laughs again, quiet. He stops suddenly in the middle of the street. “I’m, just, so happy right now,” he knocks his forehead to his. He catches sight as Yeonjun’s smile grows in their closeness.

Yeonjun reaches for his hand, and his smile etches. “ _In the middle of the night,_ ” he hums lowly, the lyrics familiar to Soobin.

It’s a Taylor Swift song. Of course it is.

Then he circles his hands around him, resting his head on his chest. Just like his room, just like Yeonjun’s _slow dance with me or something_ , but there isn’t a roof above their head.

It’s the sky. It’s the open sky.

“ _When I’m in this dream,_ ” Yeonjun goes on, barely a whisper. “ _It’s like a million stars spelling out your name_.”

Soobin can’t help but laugh. They’re slow dancing on the street in an apocalypse. There are zombies around - their earthquake sound still defeaning, but he laughs, and eases. What else has ever mattered, what else.

Yeonjun says it now, not a hum, not a melody to it. “Say that we’ll be together,” he looks at him.

“We’ll find a house for us to stay,” Soobin whispers between them, cautious but explosive. “It’ll be ours, Yeonjun.”

“Ours,” Yeonjun tastes it in his tongue. They’ve never been this close. It’s always Soobin’s room, Yeonjun’s place. Never devoted like this. Never tied.

“Soobin-ah,” he says quietly. “I was your first dance, and now I’ll always be your last too.”

Soobin dances with him, aching, “Do you know what I keep thinking about?” he asks, tingling when their skin slide. The moon isn’t the club’s lights, but he still revels in it like a first meeting.

“What?”

“I wonder why I was the one who survived,” Soobin goes on. “Out of everyone, why was I the one who got lucky? Beomgyu would’ve been better at this than me. Why did I survive?”

He hears them, all around him. They aren’t really here. Mindless.

“I think about them,” he says. _Them_ , the fuckers. The empty, rotten brain. “They probably didn’t see it coming. They didn’t know if they would still live like this,” he swallows. “Half-living. Half-dead. Barely here.”

Yeonjun pulls back to look at him, and Soobin feels the sigh in the center of his chest.

“We’re barely surviving. You’re hurt, I’m hurt, we scrape for gross chocolate in the grocery store,” he says, low, “And I wonder, am I really the lucky one? Between me and them, am I really the lucky one? Is this - is this luck?”

“It’s luck,” Yeonjun replies easily. “It’s luck, Soobin, because we’re under the stars, and we’re dancing to my favorite song. Could I get more lucky than this?”

Soobin chuckles fondly, and pulls him closer. “Sing it again.”

Then his voice comes, a slow careful whisper. It’s so simple. Everything about this is simple. It’s never about the apocalypse and if he survived. It’s never about the zombies either.

It’s this. Two bodies in a tight tangle. That despite everything, they’re still dancing.

\---

The door to the house was already open when they find it.

Yeonjun comes inside first, and Soobin watches silently as his backpack moves with each steps. It’s unusually quiet.

“So what about soup?” he whispers. His bloodied shoes on the wooden floor. Soobin closes the door behind him, making a finalized click as it bumps on the frame.

“Soup’s fine.”

The living room’s big. There’s a couch, a tv, row of books beside it like a parted curtain. It’s a family house, he thinks, two stories. The stairs are wooden. He takes his time to look around, waving his gun to the bathroom door, then the corner of a wall as the metal makes a stinging, uninterrupted sound on contact.

“Do you like the house?” Soobin asks, staring as Yeonjun puts his bag down the floor in a bump, defenseless. He’s smiling unguardedly. The open happiness to it makes his stomach drop. There’s something wrong.

“Yeah,” Yeonjun nods excitedly, already putting his palms together in tiny claps. He isn’t whispering, why isn’t he whispering - “Doesn’t this feel like our house?”

Something’s array here, in the air, in his lungs. He warily winces, “Yeonjun, wait - ”

Then it comes from his left, that grumbling earthquake and the zombie knocks into the side of his body until he drops to the wooden floor. His gun clatters somewhere beside him, making a dreadful sound. He flinches as the pain shots right up his bones, all the way to his temples, and his palms close around its bulging, sticky neck.

Its poisony smell wafts through him, so close like this, like a lure that can’t be washed. It bares its teeth, musty and yellow, but Soobin holds it in place as he tries to kick it away -

“You asshole!”

Yeonjun screams to distract it, and the zombie immediately springs up, its neck bobbling around to find the source of sound. Soobin scrambles to grip his gun, but the zombie finds Yeonjun, and he hears him scream again, louder -

He pulls the trigger.

It drops down with an ugly clack, the stifling sound out of its throat sizzles into silence.

“God, that was - ” Soobin exhales harshly, heart beating hard through his head. His hand shakes on the gun, still halting on the air. His elbows ache and throb from the fall. “That was close, I - ”

Yeonjun doesn’t say anything. Soobin watches as Yeonjun presses his hand to his shoulder, and his palm comes back red. He pulls at his shirt, revealing the open bite mark on his skin, blood dripping down his chest.

“Soobin,” Yeonjun croaks out desperately, “Soobin, you need to go right now - you need to _leave_ \- the process is fast, I won’t be able to control myself - _Soobin, please_ \- I - ”

He doesn’t move. He stays extremely still, even as Yeonjun grows frantic, and tears drop down his face.

“Soobin,” he says again, voice cracking, “Soobin, I only have a few minutes left, you need to _leave_! Go, please, _go_ right now - you need to leave - I don’t want to hurt you - ”

“You will never hurt me,” Soobin whispers quietly, heart in his throat. He bites his lip until everything numbs. He can’t feel his sprain ankle, or his wounds, he can’t feel the bruise on his spine.

He’s surrendering, he can’t feel anything. He surrenders.

“Soobin, _please_ ,” Yeonjun crawls closer to him, and up close Soobin sees the gradual shift on his skin. The sudden paleness, yet the underlying rotten color blooms on top of his veins. His eyes are still his. The eyes he’s looking at him with - they’re still his. Fond.

“Soobin-ah,” he cries, then presses his forehead on the edge of his gun. “There’s still one bullet left.”

Soobin’s finger trembles on the trigger. His breath hitches as Yeonjun grows near.

“It’s okay,” Yeonjun says, so soft, like he isn’t the one turning, like he isn’t the one whose consciousness would slip in a blink of an eye, “ _It’s okay_ , I’ll be okay, but _please_ \- _please_ , I don’t want to hurt you - ”

Soobin lets go of the gun and it clangs somewhere far from him, out of reach. He reaches up to cup Yeonjun’s now cold skin, his wet cheeks.

“You will never hurt me,” he says again. Yeonjun laughs, that one string of humanity left in him.

“Stupid, you’re so stupid - ” Yeonjun slurs his words together. The lines of his face are gentle, open. He’s serene. “You should’ve left when you still had the chance.”

“I’m not leaving you again,” Soobin whispers. “I’m never leaving you again.”

Yeonjun nods against his palms, then laughs again. “This is our house, right?”

“Yeah, it’s our house,” Soobin says softly, brushing a strand of hair on his forehead. Yeonjun’s body is heavier, foreign, more unknown. He focuses on his eyes, they’re still his _._ His, fond. Only his. “I’m with you. You’re with me. We’re safe,” he sucks in a breath. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Yeonjun’s neck jerks violently, but Soobin stays. He’s the most calm he’s ever been. He’s at peace.

“Our house,” Yeonjun repeats dazedly, almost there, almost out of it. “So, soup?”

Soobin laughs too, eyes stinging hot, “Yeah, soup. Soup’s fine - ”

He touches his cheeks, and Yeonjun still reacts to it, his dry lips curving up. “Okay,” he says, roughened. His breaths slow down quietly as the inhuman grumbling rises.

Soobin doesn’t let him go. He holds him even when his skin becomes unnaturally cold, and his eyes have gone blank. Not his anymore.

He stays.

\---

**Author's Note:**

> talk to me here :D [twt](https://twitter.com/petaljun) [cc](https://curiouscat.me/petaljun)


End file.
